Like many film enthusiasts, I love the Criterion Collection. And while I scoff at some of their selections—I won’t name names—for the most part, I anticipate new releases with excitement and glee (June’s slate is particularly amazing). Of course, due to lack of finances, I can’t buy as many as I would like; though someday, …
Although not his first feature, It’s Alive helped establish Larry Cohen’s reputation as a director of witty, conceptually ingenious low-budget genre films, which come with unexpected twists, conflicted anti-heroes, dark humour, and sympathy for monsters, both human and non-human. Cohen, writer and director of such projects as God Told Me To and Q, made his first foray into the horror genre with this low-budget cult favourite about a murderous mutant baby on a killing rampage.
Genre pioneer Larry Cohen takes a stab at the giant-monster genre with Q, The Winged Serpent, a first-rate grade-Z schlock masterwork, which successfully combines a film noir crime story with good old-fashioned creature effects. The title refers to the winged Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, represented here as a dragon-like, flying serpent hovering over New York City.